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Anybody watch this show? Usually the antics of adolescents prove to be rather humerous fodder. But two incidents irritated me.
Last week, a boy in southern school was told his hair violated the school handbook, and was forced to get his haircut. The principal even had a staff person who was also liscensed to cut hair, give the kid a hair cut that met the handbook guidlines. The boy's hair reached his collar, and his bangs fell into his eyes, both disallowed in the handbook.
This week, a kid gets called in for FACIAL HAIR. Same southern school. He was ordered to get a razor from the health office and shave now, or he could go to suspension instead. WTH??????
The real clincher; to both students the principal stated the SAME REASON for the policy. It is based on community standards, the community aparently determines what is in the student handbook. Good grief! I guess the community is made-up of a bunch of conservatives who feel that the 'clean-cut, clean-shaven' look should be the norm. This is 2009!
When I attended Jr. & Sr. high in the 70's in a very large Suburban Philadelphia, boys frequently had facial hair and long hair. No crazy rules like this existed then. I'm just amazed that public schools in some parts of the country still have these inane/insane rules. I still have yearbooks. I could go through and easily find dozens and dozens of classmates with long hair, moustaches and beards. One of my high school pals was a boy voted class clown. He had long blonde hair and a full beard by his senior year.
This just irritated me, so I had to drop-in and rant...
From the website (link below):
"Monkeying Around
Premiered Thu, January 22 at 10P
Principal Lamb trims a shaggy student’s luscious locks."
"Peach Fuzz - NEW!
Premieres Thu, January 29 at 10P
Principal Lamb forces a young man to shave off his peach fuzz."
Principal Lamb is pictured on the top left of the home page. Ironically, he's bald. :/
The Principal's Office
Update: the school is Wills Point High (TX). Ahhhhh... those backwords Texas schools, shoulda figured it was that.
Principal Lamb
I went to high school in the 70s as well. We had sex education (actually in 6th grade) and they still taught evolution. Things have gone backwards. Maybe in another ten years, they'll be forcing girls to wear skirts again.
Hey Antinous, same with me...went to high school from '73-'77 and we had some sex- ed classes (in junior high) and we were taught evolution as well. We are going backwards because the line between church and state is increasingly blurred. And with that, civil rights are at risk in a multitude of ways and I think this manifests itself with respect to kids being forced to cut their hair in school. Ask Paul KMF...he'll tell you. LOL
Hope you are doing well.
Cheers,
Max
Hey Carol...yes this is very maddening!!! Have not seen that show but I can surely see why you were upset by it. I was a child of the 70's too and this was not even remotely an issue at our school. Seems like half the boys had long hair back then...
Hope you are doing well.
Cheers,
Max
Whenever I hear about something like this, it angers me to no end. My faith in humanity is pretty much gone at this point. I can't stand intolerance of any kind, and this is just on a whole different level entirely. Why can't people just be more tolerant? It isn't hard. It isn't hard at all...
Well, look, it's not everybody; it's not even most people. The problem is that those in power get to hand it off to the people most like them, to the extent that they can, and that's probably more doable in rural areas. And the rest of us have to follow, because everyone does an individual cost-benefit analysis and figures it's "not worth the trouble". It all started around 1975 or so, and punk just made it worse by making short hair cool again (sorry to all the punk fans, but you know it's true).
It might just have to take a single movement of everyone with a grievance of this sort, whatever it might be, not just long hair.
My Myspace page
I am honestly amazed that this kind of discrimination is occurring in public high schools. My mum was graduated from a public high school in 1976, and long hair and facial hair were not the norm among seventeen and eighteen-year-olds. However, they were not uncommon (based on yearbook pictures).
I was graduated from the same school in 2004; one guy had a Mohawk. Several guys had their hair in cornrows, and several others had longer than normal hair. The guy who scored highest on the ACT had a few months' beard. My school administrators all seemed conversative in their policies and appearances, but hair on students was seen as something left to parents and students.
Like you, maybe I am just ranting, but if long hair and beards were acceptable over thirty years ago, why are they not now?
Without Monkeying around or to defuzz:
Lamb is yet another one of those highly educated idiots of society that are in so much abundance these days.
Community standards? That's insane!! Whats next, the "community" pulling guys off the street for a hair cut and shave?!
What the H** are we teaching our kids?! That the Constitution is crap?! Give me a break!
On a lighter note, when I started jr & sr high school (1967!!), girls had to wear skirts, boys slacks not jeans, shirt tucked in, hair cuts... the whole nine yards. The very next year all of that went out the window. To me, at least in the northeast, that was the year of transition. I don't think that schools in this area have ever looked back... Thank God.
Bruce
Sometimes Reality goes beyond fiction,
In 1966, Film maker François Truffault released the sci-fi flick Fahrenheit 451, which is based on a novel by Ray Bradbury. It is the story of a high-tech society where owning books are illigal, because books do not change with the whims of fashion. So firefighters have the duty to locate and burn books.
The movie itself was in tune with the zeitgeist of the 1960's with a scene of a trashy TV show shown on a 42 inch LCD TV (Notice the remote, hanging on the wall, uses a dial and not a keypad). On this show, you see policemen intercepting a long-haired youth, and taking him in for a forced haircut.
A "tongue-in-cheek" comment in the background states : Here is one who wanted to boycott the barbershops - This shows that Law Enforcement can be fun.
Today we haven't gone to burning books, and yet, trash TV has exploded, and "The Principal's Office" is the antithesis of Room 222 which advocated tolerance of differences.
Like in Fahrenheit 451, TV today (especially "Reality Shows") manipulates the masses into conformity by making a big deal of students comming to school with long hair, or facial hair.
You should start writing letters to TV stations about this garbage, and open up people's eyes about what real community standards are about, and what diversity realy means.
Have a good day,
Georges in Montreal.
my school had a rule that guys couldn't have any facial hair, thankfully it was just that and there were no rules against having long hair
I've never understood the anti-beard stance. I don't agree with it, but I do have a concept of why anti-longhair sentiment exists (rebellion/anti-establishment stance/negative perception and backlash to the Hippie movement/etc.). Maybe the same applies to beards in some folks's minds? The funniest thing in retrospect now: when I worked at the bank, in addition to hair woes, there were beard woes. Once I had let it get longer and was given a "talking to." I wanted so bad to say that we better stop the cashiers and tellers from cashing checks/making change with $50's and $5's and pennies as the men depicted, Grant and Lincoln, have very long beards. God forbid a man might be allowed to be a man!
But come on, no beards for high schoolers? There may be distorted, misinterpreted justification to force men to have short hair pulled out the Bible (thus the Bible-belt policies against such), but it's PRO-beard everywhere! Everywhere I tell you!
I always say that, "Women and little boys don't have beards, and I am neither." That's certainly not a slam against women or me being mysogynistic, but a beard is a male's decoration, if you will. Maybe it's just about control, and keeping men looking like boys, demeaning after a fashion if you think about it.
Matt B.
Thanks Carol for exposing this.
There is a school here, Simmons Middle school in Hoover Alabama, that did something similar. The teacher forced a longhaired boy to cut his own hair in the class room. His mom told me about this, she was angry but like most locals, they want to fight the school board alone. Loosing battle.
Community standards is also the only reason I was given by the principle of my kids highschool but it's a lie. Every time I go out I see between 2 to 10 longhairs. The real reason is they want to force their own standards on other people, that's why I call them hair nazis.
I suggest that we all send e-mails to this show (and anybody else that does this crap) to show them their "community standards" exist in their own bent heads.
I think this is the right link.
Paul
True TV feedback
I wonder if they pass on email comments to the respective schools? I noticed they have a discussion board, I tried looking for a thread on this issue, haven't found one yet. Maybe a few could register there and start a thread to educate some. Incidently, while that particular school and principal featued those incidents, several other schools featured have shown students with longer hair than the one who was forced to cut his; and panning around the hallways, there is the occassional male with past shoulder-length hair. So, fortunately, not all of the schools featured are like this Texas school.
Hey Paul,
And to think my sister wanted me to move to Hoover because of the good school system....Those hair Nazis
Btw I posted a mwessage on TruTV
Steve
Hey Steve, I didn't realize you lived in Alabama.
This particular school is a Jefferson Co. school that's in Hoover. I don't know how that works. It's not a Hoover city school, which has no hair policy and is a better school all around.
In fact, that is one of the school systems we have on our list to send the kids to. My wife is finishing up her last semester to become a teacher so when she does, she wants to try and get on there thus our kids can be transfered to the school she teaches at. Then I can fight the hair nazis without them having leverage over me through my kids.
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Wasn't it fun? Freaking hair naizs!
Paul
How petty...they should all be lined up!